Sunday, October 28, 2012

The End of Your Life Book Club - Will Schwalbe

The End of Your Life Book Club - Will Schwalbe (2012)

A nice rainy morning was the perfect excuse for me to lie in bed and read this book. This touching memoir is written by Will Schwalbe who joins his mother as she undergoes chemo for pancreatic cancer. They discuss their latest reads and often choose to read the same books at the same time, or swap novels, talking about the themes and the characters. This also leads to lots of discussions about their own lives, their family and the greater world around them.

As well as being an actress in her early days, Wills mother Mary Anne has also spent lots of her life dedicated to helping out refugees in war zones across the world. It is many of those stories which for me were the highlights of this book.

I always find books about books and reading (and often about music too) disappoint mainly because for so many of us our own favorites are so personal and associated with our good memories. Many of the books in this book are not my cup of tea, and not ones I would race out to read, but it is the stories between the stories that make this book shine. The main story of which is a son, helping her mother to both live and die is for me the most touching one, and I did have a few tears in my eyes at the end. 4/5